Month: December 2014

A few days ago (Sunday 28th December) I posted the first part of our countdown of this site’s best crime dramas of the year (OK, I admit… my favourites), and now it’s time to go through numbers six to one. If you missed the first part on Sunday, I mentioned a whole heap of dramas that came…

‘Tis the season to be listy. And trifely. And here at The Killing Times, things are no different. We’ve been treated to such a huge amount of quality crime dramas throughout 2014, I couldn’t resist sitting down to make a list of the best crime dramas we’ve seen and enjoyed during the past year (while…

There has been a distinct lack of crimey wimey stuff on the box this year –plus ça change – but look hard enough and there are a few nuggets embedded in the frozen edifice of festive television that is comprised of Christmas specials and the discarded boxes of a million Yule logs, with the wind of family arguments howling…

In what must count as a festive episode, the smell of nutmeg points to a serial killer, and Holmes acts as a rather self-interested matchmaker. The only real festive element to that little lot of plot elements is the spice, but fair’s fair – Elementary in the UK is broadcast a bit later than its…

There’s no denying we’ve had a great year when it comes to television crime drama, but we’ve also had a great year in the world of crime fiction, too. The two worlds cannot exist without each other – writers are inspired by visual ideas, while the TV series themselves are often adaptations of crime novels. So with that…

Last year we were treated to some new Sherlock on TV, but this year, as Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman struggled to find time to fit any more new episodes of the updated and snappy series into their busy schedules, this year’s festive period is a little bit barren when it comes to crime drama….

Once upon a time there was a dour, tormented man in a snow-bound wasteland, trudging through the whiteness and bleak and beautiful landscape, staring into the abyss and seeing first-hand what the dark side of the human race is capable of. His name was Kurt Wallander, and his story ended back in the summer. But…

One of the highlights of the past crime drama year was Hinterland – the Welsh series set in Aberystwyth against the backdrop of bleak, beautiful terrain, isolated farms and close-knit villages. It starred Richard Harrington as pained DCI Tom Mathias and had a distinctly Scandinavian feel to it. The good news is that a second series…

One of the most eagerly anticipated crime dramas of the New Year is Sky’s Fortitude. I mean, just look (and salivate) at the cast: Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Christopher Eccleston, Sofie Gråbøl, Richard Dormer, Jessica Raine, Luke Treadaway, Nicholas Pinnockup. It’s fair to say Fortitude ticks a lot of boxes, and now we know when it’s…

We were certainly kept waiting for the big face-to face encounter for Det Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) and Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan), an encounter that has bubbled menacingly – almost taunting us – for two series now. Will they? Won’t they? There have been numerous occasions when the two could have met, but I was…

As we all know, BBC4 has become the de facto place to get all your foreign-language crime drama nourishment. Over the years the channel has broadcast such dark delights as The Killing, The Bridge, Wallander, Inspector Montalbano, Salamander et al. Another channel hit is gritty French crime drama, Spiral (or Engrenages in its native tongue)….

I remember the Christmas of 2010. I was gripped by news reports of a 25-year-old woman living in Bristol had gone missing. It was a cold, white snowy festive period, and like many around the country, I feared for Joanne Yeates, all alone in the cold. Her body was discovered on 25th December. Christmas Day….